


fastest gun in the west

by Askance



Category: Justified
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-15
Updated: 2015-04-15
Packaged: 2018-03-23 04:12:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3754090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Askance/pseuds/Askance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Never abide a woman to whistle. Salute a magpie before you shoot it from the sky. Don't cross running water, you are death on two legs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	fastest gun in the west

 

No one knows where he came from; Boon likes it that way.

* * *

 

As a child he was the type to catch flies and pull out their wings and watch them crawl to their death; he made his luck in the same way. Snatched threads of superstition and pulled out their wings, transformed them, as if, by making them his, their luck was multiplied. Never abide a woman to whistle. Salute a magpie before you shoot it from the sky. Don't cross running water, you are death on two legs.

 

He believes in cowboy magic, the thing that lets the hero ride unscathed into the dusty edge of the world. When Boon moves he moves with caution, one hand aloft, rings on his fingers, three, good number, one hand at his waist, warm gun, warm luck.

* * *

 

To the people who waver in the ripples he leaves in his wake he is uncanny. Never blinks enough. He chooses all his words with great attention to their auspices. He looks like the kind of kid who cut his teeth on longhorn steer and ragged arroyos and Texas sage. No one knows where he came from; neither does he; as far as he's concerned he's mountainous and omnipresent, the fastest gun in the west. People fear him; he could drink it like water.

* * *

 

The first time he tasted Markham's weed was out the killing end of a shotgun.

* * *

 

Her name's Jenny, toothless, prostituted. She answers her door with the sad repetitious slogan she groans into all her customer's faces: Best Blowjobs In Colorado. He takes her up on it, because he can, because he's Boon, with one hand on the back of her greasy head and the other on his warm lucky gun.

 

When he's done he shoots her through the eye and robs her blind, pun intended. Pauses at the door to christen the silver revolver still humming with the shot. It's lucky to name your sword, isn't it. “Young Jenny,” he says, and whistles, and holsters her.

* * *

 

He's the fastest gun in the west, no doubt. Markham makes sure of that before he invites him across the Mississippi. He takes a deep and sinister joy in hunting the prey the old man gives him, killing them with the gleam of that bolo tie echoing in his brain. He's gonna be rich, he's gonna shoot people, he's the heir to the blood meridian, his boots are big. In Kentucky no one will know where he came from; he can be anything, he will be anything, he is death on two legs.

 

He wonders if there will be a faster gun in the east than he.

 


End file.
